


the evidence of things not seen

by martial_quill



Category: Daredevil (TV), Jessica Jones (TV), The Defenders (Marvel TV)
Genre: 5 Times, College AU, Dorothy Walker's A+ Parenting, F/M, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Jessica Is Bad At Feelings, Matt Is Bad At Talking, Powered AU, they're called Mess for a reason
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-25
Updated: 2018-01-25
Packaged: 2019-03-09 03:59:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13473234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/martial_quill/pseuds/martial_quill
Summary: "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for; the evidence of things not seen." – Hebrews 11:1Or five times they ran into each other, and one time they went somewhere together.





	the evidence of things not seen

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Shippaddict](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shippaddict/gifts).



> I kinda diverged from the prompt a bit. Sorry, shippaddict! I hope you enjoy it!

 

 

It’s his first month of college, and he already has four papers due, along with an exam for Spanish in two days. His mood, therefore, is not particularly chipper, as he pads into the copy shop, one hand in his softest, most comfortable hoodie, one hand tightly wrapped around his USB and Braille reader.

He opens the door of the copy shop, and immediately has to either duck or catch something metal flying at his head. Like an idiot, he catches it.

A flask, he realises. The smell of bourbon is heavy in the air, he can taste the girl’s adrenaline and anxiety on his tongue, and he swallows.

 _Fuck_.

Moving slowly, he offers it to the other person, whose breathing is still rapid.

For some reason, she doesn’t take it. He cocks his head, realises that he can’t hear the light humming, and feels for the switch. Thank God. She probably didn’t see him catch it.

It helps a little, lowering the girl’s heartbeat, and she sighs.

“ _Shit.”_

He snorts, holding the flask out.

“You okay?” he asks, regretting it almost immediately.

The girl scoffs. “Sunshine and fucking rainbows, man. Can’t you tell?”

He winces, lowering the hood. “Point. Sorry.”

She sighs. “No, it’s – not your fault.”

He swallows. He’s worried for her, but he’s a stranger. She doesn’t owe him anything, let alone answers about anything as deeply, deeply personal as this. He knows what that’s like.

He plugs his Braille display into one of the computers, swipes his student card along the reader, and prints off the assignment. Over and around the beeping of the printer and the sounds of the paper being inked, the girl’s breathing is becoming more and more even, her heartbeat returning to something like a resting state. The adrenaline lingers in the air, but it’s stale, not fresh.

He double-checks the page numbers when they’re printed, but yes, it should all be there. And he’d put the cover sheet on top, he’s pretty sure.

Has he mentioned that he hates hard copy submissions?

“ _Will_ you be okay?” he asks.

She nods. She doesn’t thank him, but her heartbeat isn’t angry, or quite so distressed anymore.

“Okay,” he says.

He walks out the copy shop, trying to tamp down the worry he can already feel bubbling in his gut. He’ll probably never see her again.

He hopes she’s got good friends.

* * *

 

The second time he meets her, she runs into him in the cafeteria.

“Jesus, watch– oh, _fuck,”_ she says.

Her breath still smells like bourbon. Less heavy than it had been the night he met her, though, light enough that he can also smell lingering citrus, coconut scent – shampoo, maybe? He tilts his head to the side, steadying his free hand on her leather-clad elbow and gripping his cane tighter.

“Would if I could,” he smirks at her, because seriously, there’s a cane in his hands, and it’s broad daylight, so unless _she’s_ vision-impaired too.

“So I’m deducing,” she says, stepping back a little. “Sorry. Uh. How’s tricks?”

Oh, she’s even worse at small talk than he is. How priceless.

He shrugs. “I got the paper in. On the other hand, midterms.”

She nods. “Yeah, that sucks.”

He smiles. “What d’you study?”

“I’m acing 'Fundamentals of Being an Asshole', apparently,” she says, and he can hear her eyes closing. “Goddammit, Jones,” she whispers to herself.

Her heartbeat’s up, again, but interestingly enough, he can’t taste adrenaline this time.

Instead, it feels more like attraction.

“You wanna take a seat?” he says, beginning to tap his way to a free table.

Jones hesitates, before doing so.

“Why are you playing nice?” she asks.

“I need a reason?” he raises his eyebrows.

“Traditionally, yes.”

“I’m more of a postmodernist,” Matt deadpans.

“I take it back, you’re almost as good at being an asshole as I am. I’m impressed,” she says, leaning back in her chair.

Matt chuckles. “I’m gonna grab some food. You wanna come with?”

She swishes her flask. “I’m good. Liquid lunch.”

“Bourbon doesn’t count as a meal,” he can’t stop himself from saying.

She scoffs. “Who are you, my mother? I’m fine.”

Matt raises an eyebrow, but stands and goes for food. He comes back with a plateful of lasagna and salad, and sets it down on in the middle of the table, halfway between them, along with a spare fork. He starts in on the salad. Old habits still die hard, even if Sister Bernadette wasn’t there to strictly enforce the vegetables first rule.

She caves, and takes a bite of the lasagna, before making a small pleased noise in the back of her throat, and grabbing a bigger bite.

Matt suppresses a smile, and they eat in silence for a while.

When she’s demolished the better part of his lasagna, she stands.

“Well, this was fun. Thanks, Murdock.”

He raises his eyebrows. “How d’you know my name?”

She smirks. He can hear it in her voice. “I know everything. See ya.”

“Wish I could say the same,” he says, and she snorts.

“Dork,” she says, but the word comes out almost tolerant.

Matt smirks back.

* * *

The third time they meet each other is at the copy shop again. He wakes up to the sound of her footsteps entering the room.

“We’ve gotta stop meeting like this,” Jones deadpans. “People will talk.”

“Didn’t realise I was such a figure of noto– noto – so famous,” Matt mumbles, lifting his head off his chin. Why, exactly, had he come here again? And why was 'notoriety' so damn difficult to say?

 _Ah, that’s right_.

He’d been out with Foggy, but there’d been too many people at the party they were at, and it was the end of midterms, so he’d figured that at 1:00am, the copy shop would be free. Apparently not.

“Hi,” he says.

“Hi,” Jones replies. Amusement, threading through her voice like...syrup. Syrup drizzled on pancakes, or something.

“Your voice is syrupy,” he says.

There’s a long silence, and her heartbeat doesn’t waver. “Let me guess. You’re drunk right now?”

He can hear her footsteps approaching, coming to sit in front of him, where he’s wedged between the copier and the wall.

“Li’l bit,” he admits. He holds up his right hand, pinching his thumb and forefinger apart. “Just a li’l bit.”

“Huh,” Jones says. “Party?”

“Yeah. Foggy wanted me to go, so I went.” He shakes his head. “Shouldn’t’ve.”

“Why not?” she asks. There’s no judgement in her voice, which surprises him. She’s not exactly...unopinionated.

“‘S too loud,” he finds himself saying. “It’s always too loud, too much.”

“Like overload?” she asks.

He nods, and she’s silent for a while. “Yeah, I get that,” she says.

“‘S cos of my senses, I think,” Matt says. “Normally, I’m fine, but when I’m drunk, _and_ things are loud, ‘s harder.”

“I bet,” she says.

“Whatcha doin’?” he asks.

Jones sighs. “Last assignment to hand in before the break,” she says. “A photo collage. I’ve already submitted it, but apparently I forgot the goddamn cover sheet, so it doesn’t count.”

Matt hums. “What was the brief?”

“ _Lacunae_ ,” she says. “It means–”

He smiles. “Ooh, I know this one. Bits and pieces. A missing bit, like from a manuscript.”

“That’s...exactly what it means,” she says. “How do you know that?”

“I aced Latin in high school,” he smirks.

“Show-off,” she says, but again, the tone is affectionate. There’s a long pause before she says. “I’m Jess.”

“Matt,” he says.

“I know.”

“You know everything.”

“Yep. You gonna fall asleep here?”

He hums. It had been very nice and quiet before she came in.

“Wow, you say the sweetest shit.”

Oh. Had he said that aloud?

“Yes, you did,” Jess Jones says, and the syrup in her voice is back even thicker. “God, you can’t hold your liquor at all, can you?”

He huffs. “I had five beers,” he says. “And two shots of whiskey.”

“Huh. Can you stand?”

He thinks about it. He’d gotten the spins on the way here, but he probably could stand.

He reaches up to rest one hand on the copier, and senses a hand being offered at him.

“My hand at your twelve o’clock, dude,” she says.

He smiles up at her, and grabs the hand. She hauls him to his feet easily, with no sense of exertion.

“You’re _strong,”_ he says, unable to keep the admiration out of his voice. He’s never met a girl before who could do that with one hand.

She huffs. “So I’m told,” she says. She puts his cane into his hand, but he lets his hand hang near her elbow.

“May I?” he asks her.

“Uh...sure. Do I do anything?”

“Nah, just give me your elbow.”

“I dunno,” she jokes, as his fingers fold around the sleeve of her leather jacket. “Do you plan to give it back?”

“Depends on how much I can fence it for, Jessica,” he jokes, and she _freezes,_ her heartbeat accelerating rapidly. He swallows, hearing her breathing shorten. “I’m sorry, I take it I shouldn’t call you that?”

“Shut the fuck up,” she commands, and he obeys, pressing his lips together. Good job, Murdock, screw up another friendship. Why not?

Eventually, her breathing evens out, and her heartbeat decelerates. “Don’t call me that. _Ever.”_

Matt swallows, and nods again. “Okay. I’m sorry.”

“You couldn’t know, just– just don’t fucking do it again.” Her voice isn’t angry, just _tired_ and aching, a thread of hopelessness in it like she can’t believe that she has to get up again, and live life all over again tomorrow.

“Okay,” he repeats, disentangling his hand. “Should I–”

“Yeah,” she says. “I’ll see you around, Matt.”

When he steps back into the dorm room, he silently goes to bed, ignoring Foggy’s approaching footsteps and belting out Broadway show tunes.

There’s going to be a hell of a hangover in the morning, and not just from the alcohol.

* * *

 

The fourth time, it’s at a poetry slam that Foggy has dragged him to. He takes in the room slowly, expanding his perception person by person, but it hits him like a ton of bricks when he smells _one_ particular scent. Leather, coconut shampoo, and bourbon. She’s talking to a girl who smells like strong, but pleasant citrus perfume.

“Trish, it’ll be fine. C’mon, take a breath for me,” she says, and he’s never heard her voice sound like this. Calm, steady, reassuring. Not gentle, there’s still steel in it. But not cutting or edging, either.

He squeezes Foggy’s elbow and asks him, “So where are we sitting? I want the best view,” to make him laugh, and to get the conversation out of his ears. It’s not for him to know.

But he can’t get rid of the awareness that burns through him, the fact that he knows _exactly_ where she’s sitting in relation to him in the lecture theatre (four rows down, five seats to the left, straight down the aisle), the fact that he might never get the smell of coconut and bourbon out of his nostrils, that he can almost taste the surreptitious gulp from her flask on his tongue.

Most of the time, he’s grateful for his senses. This time, he swallows, and wonders exactly which of his sins got him to this level of torture. Wrath, probably. Maybe lust. But almost certainly wrath.

He likes slam poetry. Likes the rhythm of the words and the vividness of the images, the emotion in the air and the power in the poets’ voices. One girl speaks about her white friend never truly listening; one man about panic attacks. But it’s when the third girl walks onto the stage that a murmur races around the room.

“It’s Patsy Walker,” Foggy murmurs to him. “I can’t believe it.”

Matt’s eyebrows rise. He didn’t even realise that one of the most iconic TV child stars attended their school.

Patsy Walker smells like citrus perfume, and anxiety and fear. He feels Jessica’s nod at her.

 _Oh._ She’s _Patsy Walker. The girl she was talking to earlier._

Patsy’s voice is soft at the beginning. Melodic.

_“I was ten years old, when my mother hit me, and_

_five minutes later, told me to smile._

_I wanted to cry, I wanted to scream, I wanted to hit back,_

_Make her bleed, I wanted to feel the blood trickling down her lip,_

_See the blood drip from her temple,_

_Taste her blood, sticky and viscous, on my fingers._

_I didn’t.”_

She pauses for breath.

_“I smiled. I knew the rules._

_When I was five, she tried choking me, and she told me to smile,_

_And I didn’t. I cried, and I screamed, and I asked her,_

Why, Mommy? Why? _Never realising that by asking,_

 _I would only be inviting further_ abuse!” she spits the word out, and she burns with rage, bright and fierce, and he thinks he understands why they’re friends, she and Jessica.

_“When I was nine, I reached for a cupcake. It had pink frosting,_

_But then, so did everything in my life, pink, pink, pink,_

_Like a pretty prison that I could feel encroaching,_

_But at least it was pretty. Mother smacked the cupcake out of my hand,_

_Shoved a celery stick into it._

_When I was fifteen, I gained two pounds, and she talked about it_

_For the next year. Do you want them to call you Fatsy?”_ she asks in falsetto.

_“I bit down on my tongue with all my strength,_

_And told my sister, later, that I wished I’d said:_

_‘ **Yes**. If it means I can get away from you.’ _

_The law tore into my life when I was eighteen,_

_New environment, new freedoms, like someone_

_Burst into my cell, and said, ‘Wake up, get on your feet,_

_You don’t have to stay here anymore.’_

_But sometimes, when I shut my eyes,_

_I still see my mother’s hand reaching for my throat.”_

She steps back from the mic, her words hanging in the air like a thunderclap, and Matt senses Jessica surging to her feet in a standing ovation, a move which is quickly echoes by the rest of the auditorium. He can feel the tears sliding down Jessica’s face, sense the pride in her stance, and he focusses on Foggy’s heartbeat again.

This is not for him to intrude upon.

When he accidentally bumps into her and Patsy, her smirk is layered into her voice, when she says, “Hey, Murdock. Wanna meet somebody really cool?”

“I think that’s my line,” Matt says, playing it oblivious, in order to ward off surprise he can feel in the shift of Foggy’s feet. “This is my roommate, Foggy Nelson.”

“Jess,” she nods. “This is my friend, Trish.”

 _Ah._ Got it.

“Nice to meet you, Trish,” Matt says, when Foggy, normally the sociable one, is opening and closing his mouth like a fish before he settles on keeping it closed and nodding. Matt extends his hand, and Trish shakes it, her stance settling a little.

“Thanks, nice to meet you too,” she says. “Um.”

“You were amazing up there,” Foggy offers.

“Thanks. I’d really, _really_ like to talk about anything else right now, though,” Trish says, something painfully polite in her voice.

“Do you wanna hear about I completely embarrassed the hell out of myself when I met this guy?” Foggy offers.

“It wasn’t that bad,” Matt says, picking up his cue.

“ _Matt_.” Foggy’s exasperated tone is a thing of beauty, it really is. “I called you a handsome wounded duck.”

“Oh my _God_ , you didn’t,” Trish says, and Jessica just snorts in amusement.

They go out for drinks, where Matt discovers that Jessica can indeed beat him in an arm-wrestle, Trish’s favourite drink is a mojito, and that Foggy has no clue when not to sing around pretty girls. They get Trish laughing, and Jessica’s heartbeat amused and steady, and Matt’s pretty sure that’s a win.

At the end of the night, Trish insists on getting their numbers, because “If either of you watched _It’s Patsy_ , you haven’t said a word about it, and you’re practically sitcom material. What if I need entertaining?”

“Well, I never say no to the prospect of cracking jokes to beautiful women,” Foggy says, with a dramatic bow that ends in him almost tipping into the table, and Matt catches his head just before it hits the surface.

“How do you always _do_ that?”

“I can hear where your mouth is. Usually because you never stop shooting the shit,” Matt tells him.

“Ahh, you wound me, Murdock,” Foggy says, leaning his head on Matt’s shoulder.

Matt pats his head awkwardly, and Jessica laughs and challenges them to shots.

“Don’t do it,” Trish and Matt both warn Foggy.

“She’s got an insane alcohol tolerance,” Trish says.

 _And a potential diagnosis for alcoholism_ , Matt thinks dryly.

Foggy doesn’t listen, and Matt texts Jessica when he’s nursing him through the hangover the next day.

 **Matt Murdock, 4:23am:** I blame you.

 **Jessica Jones, 1:23pm:** Hey, the guy made his own choices. He’s an adult. You can’t mother hen him forever.

 **Jessica Jones, 1:24pm:** Wait, no, I take it back. You’ll just try and do it now.

 **Matt Murdock, 1:25pm:** What can I say? I hate being told not to do things.

 **Jessica Jones, 1:25pm:** Let me guess, chip on your shoulder?

 **Matt Murdock, 1:26pm:** You’ve got no idea.

 **Jessica Jones, 1:27pm:** Try me.

* * *

The fifth time, it’s not so much as a running into each other, as much as it is...well, Jessica ordering him to meet her at the copy shop, at the blessedly deserted hour of 2:00pm. Jessica’s beaten him to the spot by the copier, and he sighs as he sits onto the table with the computers.

He’s not expecting her to press a beer into his hand when he does.

“We’re not doing this without alcohol,” she tells him.

He hums, unscrewing the cap and taking a sip. It doesn’t taste that bad. Not as good as the craft beers he likes, but it’s okay.

“So, chips on the shoulder. You sure we’re at this level of friendship, Jones? Unlocking each other’s tragic backstories?”

“For someone named after a Saint, you sure have a dickish sense of humour,” she comments appreciatively.

“I know. You’re _almost_ impressed.”

“Key word being ‘almost.’”

“And how could I forget?”

She huffs. “Look, we don’t have to. But. I mean. You’re a friend, by this point. And I think you and I have a few things in co– why are you smiling?”

“You said we’re friends.”

“Yeah, well, you didn’t take offence when I threw a flask at your hand. I think you’ve made yourself a friend.”

He licks his lips. “I’m not good at talking. About. Y’know. Important shit. Besides, isn’t sharing trauma stories like, second base or something?”

She wiggles the flask in her hand, huffing a laugh at his quip. “Yeah, well. I’m bad at this too.”

Fittingly enough, they don’t get very far.

He learns that Jessica’s adopted, and that she hates her adopted Mom with, in her words, all the fire of a volcano.

“Technically, that’s magma,” Matt says, and Jessica reaches into the trash can to throw a paper wad at his head.

He lets it hit, and she clicks her tongue, the sound echoing off the walls. “Weird. I thought you’d do the blind ninja thingy.”

“What?” he laughs nervously, trying to play it off.

“You caught my flask the first night we met,” she says. “You caught your friend’s head before it hit the table. And you always know when it’s me, and when I’m nodding or shaking my head, or whatever. But you don’t seem like the kind of asshole who’d fake blindness. You wanna tell me something?”

“You wanna tell me how you can beat me in an arm wrestle despite being a third my size?” he asks her.

“Pfft. That’s being very generous to yourself, I’m half your size at best,” she says, but her heartbeat’s picking up. She’s not lying. Just deflecting. Same as him.

He sighs. If neither of them are willing to be honest with each other, there’s no point to this exercise. “You can keep a secret, right?”

“Yeah.” Her tone is flat. She’s not here for juicy gossip. But if she’s not willing to show her cards either, then neither is he.

He smiles. “So can I. And if you want to get me to second base? Try a little romancing first,” he says, before he walks out of the copy shop and into the hot sunlight.

It takes him about two minutes to realise that he’s probably fucked up his chance with her.

When he realises, he crawls into bed, rolls over, and skips class for the first time in his life.

* * *

**+1**

She’s Jessica Jones, and if he should have learned anything by now, it’s that she’s full of surprises.

He waves Foggy off for Christmas, promises him that he’ll be fine, go, go have fun, tell me all the funny stories when you get back, isn’t that Candace outside now? It’s hard deflecting Foggy’s concern, especially when it’s so honest and well-intentioned, but honestly, they’ve only known each other for a couple of months, and Matt hates the feeling he gets when he’s imposing.

He's not brooding. Promise. 

He puts on his audiobook of Thurgood Marshall’s best speeches, and finds himself falling into the rhythms and cadences as he takes advantage of the solitude to do some long-overdue conditioning: push-ups and sit-ups.

Around the Liberty Medal speech, as he walks out of the bathroom, showered and pulling on a fresh T-shirt, he hears a familiar walk down his corridor, and some shifting in place outside his door, before a muttered, “Fuck this”, and some fairly assertive knocking on his door.

“One second,” he says, moving over to the door, picking up his sunglasses on the way and sliding them on. “Jess?” he asks.

Her breath hitches a little, and her heartbeat’s up a bit. “Hey. I, uh, wasn’t expecting to see you here.”

“In my dorm room?” he raises an eyebrow. “Glad to see your omniscience hasn’t changed.”

She scoffs, but he’s pretty sure that’s to cover a laugh. “I, uh. Shit, I’m bad at this,” she mumbles, and her hair rustles. She’s fidgeting with it, maybe. “Look, I’m a jackass, but I kinda like...this,” she says, gesturing between them.

Matt tilts his head to the side, raising his eyebrows. _You’re gonna have to do better than that, Jones._

“Coexisting?” he offers, when she doesn’t say anything else.

“No, being _friends,_ you asshole,” she says. “Anyway. I just. I shouldn’t have ambushed you for your story like that, and I’m not going to do that again, but. I just wondered if you were around.”

He smiles, and opens the door. “Come on in.”

That’s how Christmas Eve ends up spent on his bed, with Jessica’s flask of bourbon being passed between them. He learns that Trish is not just her friend, but is her adoptive sister; that sometimes on nights when she’s bored, she sometimes goes out to bars and hustles assholes out of their money by beating them in arm-wrestling contests. He tells her about the senses, and this time, it feels right.

“Oh, cool,” he says. “I do the same thing.”

“Arm wrestling?”

“Pool or darts, usually,” Matt says, with a grin. “I don’t miss.”

She chuckles. “What’s your secret?”

“You’re not going to believe this,” he warns her.

“Try me.”

“Heightened senses. Chemical accident, when I was a kid.”

She hums. “I’m calling you Captain America. Chemicals make you special, hot Irish temper, it _fits,_ don’t give me that face, Matt,” she says.

Matt pulls a face at her this time and says, “Spurious allegations.”

Her heartbeat ratchets up. “You said you can keep a secret?”

“Obviously,” Matt says, resisting the temptation to throw a pillow at her.

She nods. “Super strength.”

“Huh. That explains the arm wrestle.”

“Okay, but the real secret. How do you stave off the boredom without TV, Captain America?”

“Studying keeps me busy, most of the time,” he says. “If not, there’s always Thurgood Marshall.”

She hums. “From your tone, I’m guessing that I should know the name, but I really don’t.”

“Not many do,” Matt admits. “He was a judge. Very activist. Of the whole ‘do what’s right and wait for America to catch up’ school of thought. I read one of his speeches was nine, and I’ve been a fan of his work ever since.”

“Oh my God, you complete _dork,”_ she teases.

“Oh, c’mon,” he laughs, “even you must have an influence, or something?”

She hums. “I dunno. I like my professor’s work, she’s really good. I don’t think I have any heroes of photography. I just point my camera at stuff. Mostly Trish, which she puts up with.”

“Trish not a big photo girl?” he asks.

“Meh. I think she’s just had enough of cameras by now.”

“You can take photos of me,” he offers. “If you need a subject.”

“Seriously?”

He shrugs. “I mean, yeah, if you need someone on standby. I could do that.”

“Most people who ask just want to update their Instagram with cute candids,” Jessica snorts. “I’m guessing that’s not a priority for you, so...why?”

“We’ve had this conversation before. I’m a postmodernist.”

“The assertion that life is devoid of truth and meaning does not automatically equate to random acts of kindness to an asshole,” she asserts, swivelling so that her voice travels straight towards him.

“I’m Catholic?” he offers, with a grin.

She clicks her tongue. _“Ahh,_ now it comes out. Let me guess. This friendship thing was all a ruse, and you have a thing for hopeless causes?”

“Hey, somebody has to be Saint Jude,” he says, throwing his pillow at her.

She huffs a laugh and calls him an asshole again, even as her phone buzzes. “Huh. Okay, then,” she says.

“You gotta go?”

“Not right now,” she says. “Just Trish checking to see I’m not passed out somewhere.”

“That a common worry for her?” Matt can’t help asking.

“I’m kind of a fuck-up,” Jessica shrugs. “Sorry to disappoint, Saint Matthew.”

“I’m not– Jess, I didn’t mean–” fuck, _fuck_ _,_ he’s gotten this all wrong, he’s gotten a second chance and he’s gotten it _wrong, fuck_ – “You’re not,” he manages. “We’ve all got shit, Jones. But you’re not a fuck-up.”

She tilts her head back. “You believe that?”

He nods, because he _does_ _,_ with the same certainty that he believes in Christ and the saints, in the fact that his Dad loved him, and that he’s addicted to coffee. Something immutable, like part of the fabric of the universe. She’s– he’s not sure _what_ she is, besides being his friend, and the girl he likes, and someone with as many sharp edges as him. He hopes she’ll let him find out. But he’s sure that she’s _not_ a fuck-up.

“ _I_ _t’s nine o’clock,”_ his clock reads to him.

“Ah, shit,” he mumbles, rubbing his face with one hand. “I gotta start getting ready.”

“Plans?” she asks, something strange in her voice. It’s neutral, but not like she doesn’t care. More like she’s fighting very hard to _seem_ like she doesn’t care.

...which means she almost certainly does.

“Yeah,” he says. “Christmas Eve means midnight Mass.”

“...that’s still three hours away.”

He huffs a laugh. “I, uh, don’t go to the Mass here on campus,” he explains. “I go back home.”

“Where’s home?”

He smiles. “Manhattan. Hell’s Kitchen.”

“I thought New Yorkers were territorial as fuck about the boroughs,” she says. Her alto is low with amusement, calm like velvet now, and he wonders if it’s possible to drown in the sound of her voice and her smell. Bourbon, leather, coconut shampoo.

“Normally, we are,” he huffs a laugh. “I dunno. I just had to get away for a bit.”

“So you move an _entire borough over,"_  she says, and he laughs again, at how she wields her sarcasm like a scalpel.

“As opposed to you, little Miss Connecticut,” he teases.

“Jesus, the accent’s that’s distinctive?”

“A little,” he admits. “I think it’s mostly attitude. The whole ‘bad reputation’ vibe makes it feel like you’re someone out of town trying hard to project what a Typical New Yorker is.”

She scoffs again. “Oh, Saint Matthew, _‘Bad Reputation’_ was my favourite song _way_ before I moved here.”

He hums, rolling to his feet. “Be that as it may. I’d better start getting ready. You wanna come?”

She’s silent for a long moment. Then:

“Yeah, sure, whatever.”

Matt grins.

Jessica’s heartbeat ratchets up even further when he reappears in a button-up, dark jeans, and his coat.

“Shit. You didn’t tell me there was a dress code.”

He shrugs. “It’s midnight Mass, and I don’t make it back to Hell’s Kitchen that often. Why, what are you wearing?”

“Uh, jeans. Combat boots. Leather jacket. Scarf,” she says.

“Very descriptive,” he snorts. “That should be fine, though.”

Cane. Wallet. Keys. Yeah, he’s got it all.

“Alright, altar boy, let’s go, then,” she says. Affection, dripping thick and sweet beneath the insult.

He grins. “Let’s,” he says, fingers wrapping around her elbow.

She describes the people on the subway ride over to him, when he explains that he still doesn’t know what people actually _look_ like as far as sight is concerned. He _hates_ the subway. It’s one of the other reasons why he doesn’t visit the Kitchen that often. The enclosed space with all the myriad of a million colliding scents and sounds, and the rushing of the train through the tunnels completely throws his hearing off. But Jessica sees something in his face, and he’s barely gotten past the “too loud” in his sentence, before her hand is finding his and squeezing with surprising gentleness.

His skin feels like it’s going to shoot sparks from the contact, and he might drown in the sound of her heartbeat, jumping at her wrist with his proximity. He bites back a smile at the thought and asks her if she’s ever been to midnight Mass before.

She takes a deep breath.

“No. But then again, I haven’t ever really done this before either,” she says.

Her hand is leaving his, and he opens his mouth to protest the loss of contact, turning to face her. Her hand cups his jaw, and the world narrows until there is only her hand on his jaw, the rhythm of her breathing, the sound of her heartbeat, as she leans in and kisses him. She tastes like cheap bourbon, feels like worry and hope and anticipation mingling on her tongue.

“I don’t do this, normally,” she says, when she draws back. From the swish of her hair, she’s not looking at him. Matt focuses on her, unsure he’ll ever be able to get the taste of her out of his mouth. Unsure that he wants to. “Relationships. I’m a mess, and there’s a 99.9% chance I’m going to hurt you.” Another swish of her hair; her eyes are on him now.

He doesn’t know how he knows. It’s faith, perhaps. _The evidence of things not seen._

“You’re not the only one who’s a mess,” he says, reaching for her hand and squeezing it.

She huffs a laugh. “So you’ll catch a movie with me sometime?”

He grins. “Only if you’re okay with being tossed out of the theatre for doing audio description.”

He can hear the smile in her voice. “Ten bucks says I can get us tossed out in under ten minutes.”

“You’re on,” he tells her, before he leans in to kiss her again.

His hand stays wrapped around hers for the duration of the subway ride, the whole walk to Saint Agnes, and all the way through Mass.

It’s the best Christmas he’s had in years. 


End file.
